Sekhmet: Did you mean...?

In Europe, in the 19th century CE, an interesting device began appearing in graveyards and cemeteries: the mortsafe. This was an iron cage erected over a grave to keep the body of the deceased safe from 'resurrectionists' - better known as...

A famous story from Greece relates how a young woman named Agnodice wished to become a doctor in Athens but found this forbidden. In fact, a woman practicing medicine in Athens in the 4th century BCE faced the death penalty. Refusing to give...

Bastet is the ancient Egyptian goddess of the home and domesticity, women's secrets, fertility, childbirth, and cats. Although probably best known in the modern day as the goddess of cats, especially since she was often depicted in cat form...

A collection of Egyptian Bastet and Sekhmet figurines illustrating the importance of cat iconography in Egyptian culture. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

The Obsequies of an Egyptian Cat, oil on canvas by John Reinhard Weguelin, 1886. Auckland Art Gallery. A priestess offers gifts of food and milk to the spirit of a cat. On an altar stands the mummy of the deceased, and the tomb is decorated...

This figurine is a combination of the Syrian goddess Astarte with the Egyptian Hathor-Sekhmet. The head is formed so that the front shows the face of a woman while the side view is the profile of a lioness. The goddesses were associated with...

A depiction of Ramesses II in the sacred Tree of Life before Ptah and Sekhmet, with Thoth behind him. Relief on the north wall of the second pillared hall in the Temple of Derr on Lake Nasser, Egypt. The Temple of Derr is a rock-cut temple...

This statue of Ptahhotep (who was the Overseer of the Treasury) is shown in a Persian costume that Egyptian officials adopted when Egypt was under Persian control. The jacket with flaring sleeves, over which a skirt is wrapped, is complemented...

A sandstone relief stele depicting in the top panel Minhotep and his son Nakhtmin making offerings to Hathor, Anubis, and Osiris. The middle panel shows Minhotep and his wife Nefertari. The bottom panel shows Nakhtmin and his wife Sekhmet...

The Book of the Celestial Cow is one of the classic pieces of Egyptian funerary texts from the New Kingdom - the story of Re, Hathor, and the near destruction of humanity by the Eye of Re (Hathor-Sekhmet).